Naptime Miscellany--Moths and Other Oddities

This is what I get for offering to write a moth post.

One of the things I was/am going to mention in said post--you're never really rid of them. I think they can go dormant or something when the weather's cold, because they've been popping up now and then since April. All in our bedroom, which has almost zero wool in it, so I wasn't too concerned.

But it just keeps happening. Two or three males flying around that I squish or get caught in the traps.

Only this time I've found TWO downstairs. Deep breaths.

I am, once again, examining my yarn and other woolens from top to bottom, and STILL no traces of damage. They are like moth ninjas with a secret base somewhere, and it is stressing me out.

The fact is that moths are almost an inevitable part of life for any lover of natural fibers who lives in a certain climate. I was in the yarn store yesterday looking for something green, and I found a dead moth on a skein. In the yarn store! Once you know what you're looking for--and are paranoid enough to expect it everywhere--you will find them.

I'm not sure if that's encouraging or discouraging, but there it is.

It makes you wonder how old woolen textiles have survived so long. I guess it's a combination of climate control (winters without heat surely killed off many pests) and the fact that people didn't own an excess of clothes that were put into storage; most things were in regular use.

In other knitting-related weirdness ... my mother-in-law hadn't knit for years and years, but she had a canvas bag with some yarn and needles that Keith brought back from San Francisco. In it I found this odd tool, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was. An unusual cable needle? Something for a craft other than knitting?

I posted the picture on Ravelry, and most of those people were just as stumped ... until a veterinarian came along and said it's a grooved director, or incision guide. A surgical tool used for guiding scalpels and other instruments where they need to go without cutting other tissues.

My MIL was never a vet, or a nurse, so I'm not sure why she even owned one of these, let alone how it ended up in her knitting bag! How funny, right? I wish I could ask her for the story behind it. I wish in general that knitting was something that we could have bonded over. There are a lot of things I wish, and I am realizing, a lot of hurts that I still have to process. But I hope, someday, we will meet again, and be able to know and love each other in a way that wasn't possible in this life.

And she can tell me why she had a surgical tool with her knitting needles. :)